Ding Dong LED on High

Jeremy Bennett

Embecosm’s staff got into the Christmas spirit with our entry into the Lymington Christmas Tree Festival. A tree festooned with glittery GNUs and Tuxes, a 3D printed star and 17 small computers, in the form of the Cuttlefish and Seahorse Arduino boards designed by Saar Drimer of Boldport. An opportunity for all our team to get involved, and even for some of our administrative team to learn soldering skills.

As occasionally happens, this project ran a little late. But fortunately the vicar of lymington, Peter Salisbury, as well as caring for the 9,000 souls of his Parish, is a dab hand with electronics (you can see him here speaking to the BCS and OSHUG about open source and God). He came to our rescue and soldered together the star – one cuttlefish Arduino, 24 LEDs – on the evening before the festival.

As you would expect from Embecosm, the hardware design and all the software are freely available. You can see videos of our finished tree in all its pulsating LED glory here and here.

If you went to the festival, you will have seen our tree at the entrance to the church. And as you can see, when we got it back to the office after the festival, we realized our ceiling is not quite as high as the church!

We wish you all a peaceful and festive Christmas holiday and a successful new year.